When Smart People Resist Change

by Nancy Dailey, Ph.D. and Kelly O'Brien

"When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail." This saying captures the culture of many organizations these days as they struggle to reinvent themselves, stay competitive, or grow. Why, when organizations are filled with smart, successful people? Successful people got where they are because they were good at what they do. But the same skills that made them successful can also make them closed to learning new things and embracing change.

The research on "experts" and "smart people" reveals a shared characteristic -- the ability to transfer learning to new problems. They can transform their mastery of concepts and information from a set of facts into usable knowledge. Experts can quickly identify what is relevant, which is why they are good problem solvers. But what happens when smart people confront problems outside of their experience or knowledge base? When the analogies and metaphors drawn from their knowledge reservoir don't make sense in the current environment?

Framing the right problem
The problem then becomes one of framing. How smart people go about defining and solving problems is at the core of this dilemma. We see this with technology conversions when all resources get allocated to software selection and installation, while ignoring culture change and real-time impact on day-to-day operations.

Chris Argyris' classic Harvard Business Review article, Teaching Smart People How to Learn, speaks to this "smart people" dilemma. Often the smartest people have the most difficult time learning. He postulates that highly professional and successful people rarely experience failure and therefore never have the opportunity to learn from failure. So when the inevitable failure happens, they "...become defensive, screen out criticism, and put the "blame" on anyone and everyone but themselves. In short, their ability to learn shuts down precisely at the moment they need it most."

Failure is inevitable
When an organization undergoes significant and fundamental transition, it is exactly when the system needs all of its really smart, successful people ready to address the new problems that will be unleashed. And failures -- some big, some small -- are inevitable. The inability to quickly learn is a huge obstacle if the key players can't accept that they are on a steep learning curve, step up to handle failure, and adopt a personal learning ethic that others can model. Unfortunately, the norm is far more often that people finger-point, play the blame game, and generally back away from owning what are reasonable and predictable missteps along the way.

How smart people can embrace change
Argyris attributes this dynamic in organizations to the lack of "double-loop learning" or the lack of critical reflection and honest feedback. His remedy for smart people: reflect critically on your own behavior, identify the ways you may inadvertently contribute to the organization's problems, and then change how you act. You must learn how the very way you go about defining and solving problems can be a source of problems in its own right. Just because you're smart, doesn't mean you're immune to lifelong learning. Importing new ideas from other mindsets and seeking out role models during times of transition or chaos are noble strategies for accelerating your own learning curve. Show others how really smart you are, not how far you can dig in your heels.

AN EFFECTIVE LEADER

AN EFFECTIVE LEADER MUST BE:

Strong enough to be weak

Successful enough to fail

Busy enough to make time

Wise enough to say "I don''t know"

Serious enough to laugh

Rich enough to say "I'm wrong"

Compassionate enough to discipline

Mature enough to be childlike

Important enough to be last

Planned enough to be spontaneous

Controlled enough to be flexible

Free enough to endure captivity

Knowledgeable enough to ask questions

Loving enough to be angry

Great enough to be anonymous

Responsible enough to play

Assured enough to be rejected

Victorious enough to lose

Industrious enough to relax

Leading enough to serve

(Brewer, as cited by Hansel, 1987)

Leaders Should Acquire Skills and Knowledge

Leaders are made or born? This is not an issue. The true leader ignores such arguments and instead concentrates on developing the leadership qualities necessary for success. Either made or born, if they are able to increase their skills in displaying these five quality characteristics, they will make it easier for people to follow them.

The less time leaders have to spend on getting others to follow them, the more time they have to spend refining exactly where they want to go and how to get there. The five leadership traits are namely,

· Honest and Truthful

· Forward and Visionary Thinking

· Competent and Trustworthy

· Inspiring and Energizing

· Intelligent and Adaptable

Innovation starts from the CEO, says co-founder of Apple

INNOVATION LEADERSHIP

By: Lee Xieli, Singapore

Singapore – Companies eager to groom more innovative talent to drive business should have the chief executive set the right corporate culture from the start, says Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple.


Wozniak, who founded Apple with Steve Jobs in 1976, said Jobs is a great CEO who encourages innovation right from the start. “Steve was so obviously excellent in everything. He can run every single division and every single aspect of the company.”

Wozniak added, “I was in charge of engineering because I don’t like conflict. I like to keep my feet on the ground and not step on other people’s toes and tell them, ‘Oh, the box should be a different colour, don’t you think?’”

The former engineer at Hewlett Packard told Human Resources leaving the tech company to co-found Apple was the best decision he has ever made in his life. Before he left, he had tried to persuade his former employer to pour resources into his idea at that time but they rejected him five times. “It’s a good thing they turned me down because they would have built a boring product for engineers that wouldn’t have changed the world.”

Wozniak said to the audience that the reason HP turned him down was because it could not find a way to head into a new business direction due to its company culture. “It used to be a type of company that did only one kind of thing so it is very difficult for it to do another kind [of product].”

To inspire an individual to think innovatively, Wozniak said there are different kinds of motivation such as rewards and punishment. “Rewards in business are your salary, job title, the number of houses you have, your cars, your clothing. These are the kinds of things that define the success you have or the standing you have in the society.”

But that alone will not spur an employee to take time out for business innovation. Wozniak said individuals must have their personal intrinsic rewards. “The rewards in your own head – I want to do something for my own reason – are 10 times as strong,” he said.

“You will work on it harder than anyone and sometimes that goal is what leads you to skills that make you better than anyone else in the world at what you do. That is very important in the process of innovation. You got to think that way.”

Woznia was speaking on innovation and creativity at the launch of the DRIVE (DRiving InnoVation Excellence) series by the Singapore Workforce Development Agency (WDA) and Next UTM, an initiative under NTUC LearningHub.

Designed for professionals, managers, executives and technicians (PMETs), the series will provide a knowledge-sharing platform for companies looking to build a more productive, high-performing work environment. Thought leaders and leading practitioners in the field of business excellence would be invited to share best practices during each DRIVE event.

Two new Workforce Skills Qualifications (WSQ) training programmes were also launched yesterday by Jospehine Teo, assistant secretary-general for NTUC.

The WSQ Certified Associate Operations Executive (AOE) programme will help participants address productivity gaps in their companies and develop “T-shaped” competencies in managing quality, people, processes and projects. The programme will train about 300 PMETs over a period of two years.

The WSQ Certified Productivity and Innovation Specialist (CPIS) programme aims to help employees with operational-level responsibilities foster innovation within their organisations. At least 450 workers are set to benefit from this programme annually.

Ways to Increase Productivity & Efficiency

Every investor and company involves in business are targeting to gain the highest return in term of profit. They are needs to draws a strategy that can increase productivity and efficiency level. High productivity and efficiency will be eliminating wastage, reduce person-hour, produces higher quality of good and product. All these will directly reducing cost.

There are several ways a business can do to improve productivity and efficiency levels.

a] Train The Workforce – Training the workforce in order to give them more skills or knowledge is clearly a cost to firms. They will often have to pay experts to train employees and will also lose the productive time of employees whilst they are training. However, this increase in cost should be more than offset in the long term by improvements in the workers productivity levels. This is because training should enable workers to work more quickly and more accurately that will produce better quality products.

b] Improve Motivation – A better-motivated workforce will work harder and take pride in their work. This should increase the speed of production and also improve the quality of products that are being produced. There are many different financial (e.g. bonuses) and non-financial ways (e.g. empowerment) for businesses to motivate their workers.

c] More Capital equipment – Investment into new, higher technological machinery can have a number of advantages.
- longer hours can be worked
- Increased speed of production (machine can perform repetitive and complicated tasks more quickly)
- Increase accuracy and therefore less wastage

d] Use better quality raw materials – This can reduce the amount of time wasted on rejected or defective products. A business should ensure they find the supplier who can supply the best quality resources, but at a competitive price and also with reliable delivery.


Conclusion

Improvement in efficiency are not that easy to obtain. For instance managers may find workers resistant to changes such as introducing new machinery or new working practices. This is because workers fear that changes will lead to redundancies. It can also take a long time for any new strategies to feed through into the form of increased efficiency. In addition, there can be a conflict between productivity and quality. Increasing productivity by its nature implies increasing the speed of production, and if managers are not careful, this can mean that workers focus solely on quantity and not the quality of their work.

Kajian: Renung PAYU DARA Panjangkan Usia Lelaki

Agak pelik bunyinya. Antara percaya dengan tidak. Namun itulah hasil kajian yang telah dibuat /diketuai oleh Dr Karen Weatherby yang dimuatkan dalam jurnal perubatan New England Journal of Medicine. Kata Dr Karen, lelaki yang merenung payu dara wanita selama 10 minit dapat memanjangkan usianya sehingga enam tahun. Menurut kajiannya, merenung payu dara wanita selama 10 minit sehari bersamaan dengan 30 minit bersenam di gimnasium.

Kajian yang memakan masa selama lima tahun itu melibatkan 200 orang lelaki tulen Eropah. Bagi sesiapa yang berminat untuk mengetahui lanjut tentang penemuan ini, silalah menggelintar ruang maya dengan menaip nama doktor ini atau nama jurnal perubatan di atas.

www.on9g.com/en/viewthread.php?tid=22643

forum.lowyat.net/topic/1216068

Knowledge Sharing

Sharing the knowledge among the employees is important in tandem of the rapid change happen in technology, business and social. Today, the creation and application of new knowledge is essential to the survival of almost businesses. Knowledge sharing is important because as things change so does the knowledge base erode – in some businesses, as much as 50 % of what someone knew five years ago is probably obsolete today. By sharing the knowledge, employee could complement each other in the areas that they could be lacked. For most of us, learning from our mistakes is not part of our everyday vernacular. We have enough worries without being pressed to be critical of our own behavior.

But some professional are defiance in sharing knowledge because they may object to share as they feel that others will stealing their ideas and reap the rewards rightly theirs. It is due to some ego existed among them as well as the competition to grow up in the hierarchy in the organization. The management has a duty to encourage them to work together more effectively, to collaborate and to share the information and knowledge in solving the problems as well as to provide very good services.